Messages - Headless Death

Next episode is going to be heavy. Guts and Casca reunion accompanied by the latter's realization that the Eclipse wasn't just a bad dream. I don't think I've ever been this excited for a new Berserk episode.

As for what their next goals are, I've been thinking back to the scene on the boat after the Sea God section where Guts looks out the window and begins to inwardly declare what he will do after his current journey is over.

This could easily be taken as Guts deciding to go after revenge again (and I've seen a lot of people come to this conclusion). But I've also been wondering if this isn't him resigning himself to staying on Elfhelm with Casca for her sake. Since he comes to this decision after thinking to himself that Casca became insane because she couldn't cope with the trauma. Maybe he is deciding here that he doesn't repeat his previous mistake and leave her behind for revenge while she is in such a critical state. And the look in his eyes is one of frustration because he knows this means keeping himself away from what he wants.Of course things obviously wouldn't go that way or at least continue that way forever for the sake of the narrative. Just a thought.

That is a good scene. I took this scene as a reminder that Guts wants revenge, even though he knows he should not pursue it. I see his reflections at other times of missing the opportunities to be with what matters as important to this part as well. Where he declared he would never leave Casca again, or his reflecting that no matter how much you force something it will never be what it once was, or Godo's talk with him to remind him that hatred consumes a person, and that hatred is the place people go when they cannot handle their own sorrow. I agree that he had resigned himself to staying on the Island with Casca, since when reflecting he also mentioned that he would only need to use the berserker armor until he gets there, hoping by doing so he would be able to retain his remaining senses. As for next goals, I almost see a SK intervention, Moonchild, or something to convince Guts to return.

What a fantastic Episode. Thank you Aaz and Puella for the translation. I caught back up with the series just in time to get to see the event I've been waiting for since I started reading the series back in 2004. With the pace these last couple episodes have had, I get the feeling that Miura is getting a refreshed excitement of getting to do something that he has been thinking about how to do for 20 years. And hopefully that means that this writing high may mean a period with fewer or at least shorter hiatuses. As far as the depection of the rape and the events of the eclipse from Casca's view, I feel like it was handled well. To not emphasis on the details of the eclipse, and to focus on the emotional effect of the characters fit for this portion, because I get the feeling that now that Casca is awake, she will now be having flashes back to details of the eclipse during other parts of the story. Much like how when the horse "Mounts" Farnese, Guts has his flash back to the Eclipse that reignites his anger/rage. Casca may, for an example, see Farnese Pinned down to the floor, and get a flashback of Guts being pinned down reigniting her feelings of helplessness/despair of being able to do anything about it and may succumb to these feelings or fight them.I'm excited to see her talk to Guts again for the first time. I suppose I'm just excited about the phase of the story we are now entering, where we don't know the next goals of the characters yet. I suppose I'm just excited about all of it.

I enjoyed the movie as entertaining as long as I didn't think about the story too much.

The Porgs were cute, and I felt they fit in well considering the were made to hide the Puffin's that kept getting into the shots while they were filming

I liked the aspect of Rey not coming from any noteworthy Jedi Line, this was a reason I was always rooting foolishly for Finn to be force sensitive and to be a Jedi of average power. I wanted there to be Jedi that did not revolve around the Skywalker bloodline, and the Rey revelation does that. But now I feel like Finn's character doesn't really have any significance, his part in this movie felt useless. His Casino Side quest overall became useless to the story, he didn't really have any character building. He goes from "I can't save everyone, but I can make sure Rey doesn't die." to "I must sacrifice myself for these people that I was going to let die earlier in this movie."

That may not have been so bad on its own except that I figure Rose has the exact opposite progression, from "You're selfish for trying to save someone you care about." to "Everyone can just die, as long as the person I care about doesn't die yet." Although I felt Rose's whole character was sloppy. Not to mention that they have DJ who I suppose is supposed to invoke some Lando-like feelings of betrayal, when he pretty much explains point blank ahead of time that his actions are done solely based on transactions. The only surprise was that he behaved like he said he would. But enough complaining about the casino plotline.

With the Poe Dreadnaught fight, I felt like even if Poe was gung-Ho about downing a Dreadnaught, he would at least think somewhat strategically if he is expected to be any kind of tactical leader. I do not understand the reasoning of sacrificing most of your fleet to down one ship that they have more of. It could be understandable if it was Snoke's ship or a main target, but this seems like loosing most of your chess pieces to take out one of your opponent's knights in chess.

At this point I almost feel they should have let Leia die when the bridge was destroyed, her Jedi Space flight just felt out of place. Or have had her do the light speed explosion instead of Holdo, so they don't have to have her death be an off screen occurrence for the next movie. Although they had more filmed for her in this movie than I was expecting, so maybe they still have something filmed for the next movie.

I had hoped for more for Luke, although the one man against an army visual was awesome, I felt like they wasted a lot of opportunity for his character. But that was an overall issue with the movie is that they didn't explore much in character depth, and Luke was at least one of the few that actually got some look into his character complexity, the other was Kylo. Kylo Continued on with his good/evil conflict, which at the same time seemed to be the same as Luke's struggle to a degree. Rey unfortunately didn't really grow much as a character, she may have gotten something from the lesson that Luke gave her, but it wasn't really explored.

Towards the end I got the feeling that they were trying to get Poe and Rey together, but it would seem forced considering it was their first time meeting each other. But I also felt that the Finn and Rose thing felt forced too. So far that leaves the Finn/Poe bromance as the one that felt as natural as the Luke/Han one from the original. At this point it just doesn't look to be getting any sort of naturally developing love story like Han/Leia, or attempted to be natural like Padme/Anakin, and instead will likely get one slapped together at the end.

Overall I would still give the movie a C+, but I will need to reevaluate it once the last installment comes out to see how well it ties the movies together. On it's own, it had too many threads that didn't tie together well.

Okay, that's good. I've noticed that it can depend on how you navigate to SK.net. If I type "skullknight.net" it in IE, then it leads to the unsecure version. In Chrome it leads to the Secure Version. In Firefox the unsecured Version. If you search in google, it leads to the secured version, although if using Bing it leads to the unsecured.

Another thing I noticed, is if you go into the forum from the landing page, you are taken to the unsecure version regardless if you are on the secure or unsecure version of the landing page. I figure this is that time consuming part I mentioned before where it can take a while before finding all the forgotten references to the HTTP without the 'S'.

Would it be possible to put in a script to default to the use of HTTPS?

One setback I can see is the incompatibility with out of date platforms like Windows XP prior to SP3. But a vast majority of people are going to be using compatible browsers so I don't think this is that much of an issue.

Another Could be cost, with many sites asking to $50-150 for certificates. But a solution to this could be Let's Encrypt, which offers Domain Verification certificates for free by being sponsored by a large list of the big internet players.

And I suppose the largest hurdle to them all would be time to look into how to implement on your site, and which URLs may need to be updated to have that added 's'. The most I can find related to the SMF platform is from this thread on their board. Another consideration is the DV certificates provided by Let's Encrypt expire every 90 days, so they suggest renewing the certificate automatically every 60 days.

I can easily see this something that may take time to implement, and may not be done with how life typically gets in the way of side projects like this. I mostly bring this up because I'm hoping to no longer see the not secured warning when looking at SK.net.

I'm glad that they respond to criticism pretty well. It's only been about a week since they announced their suggested change before they decided it may not be the best idea after hearing from their users.

It seems that the last time the Favicon was updated was last time I brought it up back in 2005. Since then, the typical screen resolutions have increased making the 16x16 icon look dated, and there are now mobile icons, touchbar icons, ect. that can be utilized. It may be time to update it once more. Using the template at https://realfavicongenerator.net/ I was able to make the following

TBH, I can't really think of any tweaks in the short term either that would change anything. I think a wait and see approach is needed to see how much the change they made really helps/hurts creators, and each one will need to decide if any action/changes are needed based on how it affects them. Currently Patreon is facing some backlash about the announced change from both patrons and creators, and may revert to the previous method anyways. But if they don't, as you mentioned with the small number of patrons you are dealing with, we are likely to continue supporting SK.net through the change. If most are like me, this is likely one of the few, if not the only patreon they are supporting. Which really minimizes the effects of the change. And if SK.net's revenue doesn't increase in a meaningful way, changing goals doesn't make sense either. Although getting to the next translation goal could be fun.

In the long term, if things were to get worse, the only change I could see potentially would be to try another similar service in addition to Patreon. Unfortunately, none have the maturity Patreon has at the moment. But Kickstarter's Drip service may become an alternative, once it gets out of the invite only period, depending on how they handle processing fees themselves.

No change is planned given that it won't really make much of a difference.

That makes sense. I’m guessing the change likely has a greater effect on the creators that receive a larger percentage of their revenue from pledges with low price points. SK.net looks to be getting most revenue from larger contributors which may have helped keep Patreon from charging too much in fees.

With the upcoming change to how Patreon Pledges are calculated(where fees will be applied primary to the person pledging instead of the creator), will the pledge goals change to reflect the additional revenue per pledge? Or any other changes? Doesn't change my pledge at all, but I could see Patreon's change affect the 1 dollar pledges if there is an additional 37 cents added to the pledge. Just curious if there was any thought to it.

I like the thought of a dream Casca coming to their Aid. Where Farnese and Schierke get a chance to see the strength and determination of a true Casca. I figure this fits with the idea that a person cannot be healed without their desire to return. Casca may return in order to protect that feeling of familiarity and support she gets from Farnese and Schierke as she regains the final fragment. Since we know that the battle hardened Casca is in there somewhere as demonstrated when she killed her would be rapists. And the rules of the dream world are determined by the dreamer as explained by the Sovereign.

You have my support. I was able to benefit much back when I was more active. And now I can benefit even more as I catch up on all I've missed. I mean there are already 90 Podcasts to listen to. So far I've only listened to part 1 of the SK series. The translations were so important back when the only other options were Evil Genius and Band of the Hawk, which at times stole Puella's work anyways. And even today as the episodes continue to come out, good translations are important, but at least now we have Darkhorse Translations which aren't too bad either for the back issues.

So, Miura shouldn't fuck him up like some Jon Snow... on the other hand, he is a Star Wars fan, so maybe he won't be able to resist the pull of "legitimizing" Guts with some kind if impressive background that explains his physical prowess if nothing else.

If Miura decides to do anything with "legitimizing" Guts, I'm hoping it would ignore his physical prowess and instead focus on some potential plot element. For example a simple relation to some future character that explains why his mother was hung. I don't think any "legitimizing" is needed, but I wouldn't want anything to trivialize Guts's tenacity.

I have had this as a discussion before with a couple friends, and they immediately think that Guts must be special in someway. Which fits into the "Hero's journey" archetype. For example Harry Potter was the son of respected wizard, or Luke was the son of the greatest Jedi. So with this line of thinking, Guts could be special by having a blood relation with a notable character, or royal blood, or in the case of fantasy maybe special strength granted through some sort of mixed birth(Like the part demon/devil that likes to appear so much in anime).

In my opinion, the needs to be special doesn't fit for Guts. I feel the power of the story pushes Guts to be of Mundane Roots, but with the overall push to show that he is a survivor. He was born to the death of his mother hanging from a tree. Abandoned by all, but survives to see another day thanks to Shisu. Had rough childhood where he was taught to survive or die by Gambino. Each step of his life demonstrating the strength of the will to survive despite "only being human" or despite unwelcoming odds. His growth as a character shifts the focus of not just self preservation(Early life), but ensuring the survival of others(OG BoTF, and current traveling party) through his will and resolve breaking beyond the norm of what should be possible with only having mundane roots and manifesting into his many extraordinary feats.

With that in mind, I think that the story has it all wrapped up on his Lineage. I think he was born to a common woman, maybe hung for being suspected as a heretic, and then taken in by Shisu and Gambino. I think anything beyond that is likely to be irrelevant.

Just wanted to get an idea of what the thoughts of other readers were on the topic.

Interesting, a 10-year hiatus?! SO LAZY! You've got some catching up to do

I definitely do, Although I caught up with the current chapter, I now need to reread yet to refresh the story in my head, since its had a long time to fade since my last reread. I told my Wife how long its been since I read it, and she commented, "So this series that you've talked about the last 6 years I've known you, and you haven't even kept up to date since before I knew you."

While the animation was awful for mouth movement, and making everything shiny. I appreciate it as a summary of some of the plot points, even if many things were glossed over, or outright ignored. I'm still likely to pick up the set when it's released in January, Despite the Loud clangs of the Dragonslayer. And even wouldn't mind seeing more, as I still enjoy seeing adaptations that I can absorb lazily at times.

Wow, after 10 years of not reading a new berserk, I have now caught back up. Although I was hopeful they would be further by now, I am still quite happy they have gotten further in the story than I had expected. I was still expecting them to be on Roderick's Boat making a few more stops along the way.

I'm happy to see that Silat and Rickert are at least working together. And I now have another favorite moment with Rickert's Bitch slap of Griffith.

While it will be hard to wait now to get to the event I've been waiting for since I first read through the manga 12 years ago, I am eagerly looking forward to what will happen once Casca's mind is restored.